Members of real-life or virtual communities often communicate via server- or service-based communication applications, including but not limited to email applications, social networking applications, gaming applications, discussion forum applications, blogging applications, subscription/publication applications, and the like. To bring desired levels of anonymity and/or security to their communications, community members may identify themselves using representations (such as avatars and/or user names) or other items of information.
Members of a community may also wish to engage in telephonic communications with other community members. Typical server- or service-based communication applications, however, are not configured—from either business or technical perspectives—to support telephonic communications in a failsafe and cost-effective manner. Although community members can exchange their own unique telephone numbers (generally issued by operators of telephony networks including but not limited to wireless networks, public switched telephony networks, or voice-over-IP networks), use and sharing of unique telephone numbers between community members may not preserve the desired levels of privacy or security afforded by communication applications.